There will be jazz orchestra concerts that create much bigger musical storms and specifically Scottish National Jazz Orchestra concerts that feature more familiar instrumentation. This one, though, has to go down as particularly special. It was the sort of occasion that illustrates how there’s no substitute for being in the room where and when the music is being played, even when that music features on iconic recordings.
SNJO director Tommy Smith, who cast himself in the unusual role as conductor, had worked on the original scores of Gil Evans’s arrangements of Sketches of Spain and Porgy & Bess and expanded the woodwind section, and the result was gorgeously defined, beautifully dynamic settings for the soloists, trumpeters Laura Jurd and Tom MacNiven, who were filling Miles Davis’s shoes.
These are entirely different players and yet they both managed to inhabit the Miles zone while bringing their own personalities to the music. Jurd was measured, playing themes with delicate poise and improvising with a relaxed certainty as an ensemble including French horns, oboe, bassoon, trumpets and trombone produced light, pastel colours and swelled with immaculate pacing on Sketches’ lovely Saeta.
read more at: http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/15256273.Music_review__Scottish_National_Jazz_Orchestra__Edinburgh/
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